It is known that a wide variety of potato based materials will expand or puff under appropriate conditions and will retain the expanded size upon cooling. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,506,454, 3,703,378, 3,703,379, 3,753,729, 3,800,050, 3,849,582, 3,904,429, 3,966,990, 4,517,204, and 4,734,289. It is also known to use dried potato flour (U.S. Pat. No. 3,220,852), precooked and dehydrated potatoes (U.S. Pat. No. 3,451,822), pregelatinized potato starch (U.S. Pat. No. 3,652,294), potato flour (U.S. Pat. No. 3,753,735) and cooked potato solids (U.S. Pat. No. 3,886,291).
In addition to potato based materials, the art has also described other materials which can be used to prepare puffed products. Such other materials include corn dough (U.S. Pat. No. 2,665,214); a mixture of corn flour, gelatinized corn flour, and tapioca starch (U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,193); whole wheat or whole rye (U.S. Pat. No. 3,656,966); a mixture of crosslinked starches (U.S. Pat. No. 3,666,511); a mixture of fat and gelatinized rice flour (U.S. Pat. No. 3,922,370); a gelatinous starch (U.S. Pat. No. 3,925,567); a defatted soy protein or casein (U.S. Pat. No. 3,978,244); ground wheat (U.S. Pat. No. 4,259,359); and, a mixture of corn starch and defatted animal parts (U.S. Pat. No. 4,262,028).
The various techniques used to puff the products include frying, hot air heating, and microwave heating. A survey of various techniques used in the art is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,251,551 and 4,409,250.
As is recognized in the art, formulations made primarily for one puffing technique generally do not puff as well using another technique (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,551). It would thus be highly desirable to develop a material which would puff under a wide variety of conditions and using a variety of different puffing techniques.